


Shatter

by Kaisces (kaisces)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, OT21 (NCT), Slow Burn, Thriller, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 09:10:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19809205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaisces/pseuds/Kaisces
Summary: Taeyong didn't know when it all started. When he started to constantly check over his shoulder. When his friends started to carry knives in their pockets. He does know that he's been running for a very long time and he knows that there is more to life than running. Running from love, the looks, and from his own reflection - the glass has started to crack.





	Shatter

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Homophobia, alcoholism and drug use, mental disorders, STRONG violence, bullying, blasphemy, mentions of abuse, morbid imagery.

Taeyong is nineteen. 

His mother works as a babysitter. She leaves after dinner and returns later at night with strands of dark hair falling over her ageing face and clumps of playdough caught under broken fingernails. She often smells of baby sick and ready-made spaghetti sauce but Taeyong will give her a quick kiss on the cheek before lights out anyway.

He’s washing the dishes on a Friday evening when his mother clatters down the stairs and announces her leave. Her voice is quieter, stuffier, and he can hear her letting out the softest little coughs and he thinks that he should most definitely check if she’s alright. Tiptoeing through the dining room and down the hallway, he towels off a ceramic kitchen plate as he goes, and bites his lip as she fumbles about the porch trying to slip on her shoes.

“Is everything okay?” he sets the plate down on the dusty set of drawers by the door and places a hand on her weary shoulders. She is paler than usual, languid, and weak as if she was about to deliver a child rather than mind someone else's and she shrugs him off like nobody's business.

“Always worrying about me,” she sighs. “I can look after myself. You, on the other hand, should be worrying about exams or girls or maybe even video games? Anything other than your old Mama’s health.”

“But I-“

She raises a dainty finger to his lips and gives him a soft glare. “No buts, finish drying the dishes and go upstairs. I’ll see you in the morning.” She squeezes his cheek between her thumb and forefinger before slinging her handbag over one shoulder and slinking out the door, coughing all the way.

He watches as her back blends into the shadows, the porch light flickering as she walks further away. He pouts and turns the key to the left. Picking p his towel and plate, he heads back to the kitchen. 

Instant noodles awaited him.

♝♝♝

“I can’t stand it when you do that. Look at the mess you’re making. You know I hate mess,” Doyoung sighs. “Get a grip of yourself. You’ll look like some weird sewer rat if you leave the house with all these wrinkles on your shirt.”

“Drop the act, we all know you’re the messiest bastard out of anyone. Who even notices wrinkles on a shirt?” Taeyong replies and takes another bite of his toast.

They’re seated at Taeyong’s kitchen table. Doyoung, having nothing better to do, had decided to pay Taeyong a visit before work later on in the day. It had taken Taeyong by surprise when he awoke to the sight of a dark figure hovering at the end of his bed, and it had taken the better part of the morning to convince himself that the figure was indeed Doyoung and not some brave ghost admiring him through the night. (“Why even bother giving me a set of keys if you’re gonna shit yourself every time I use them?” Said Doyoung.)

He throws the last remaining crust on his plate and takes it to the sink. Doyoung watches him as he wipes the counter down and unloads the dishwasher with utmost efficiency. “You need a promotion.” He muses. “Wasted potential I tell you, they don’t value the skills of the multi-talented Taeyong. You deserve to be a server...like me.” He laughs. 

“It would be nice to get paid more than minimum wage,” He replies. “It’s been a long time coming.”

He had met Doyoung two years ago. Taeyong couldn’t afford things like University, for him the doors to the higher society where closed and locked up. His friends had all managed to scrape up whatever they had to fund a course in something, but none of them had even been close to SKY level. That was how Taeyong found himself working at the nearest  _ Jaws Tteokbokki _ , fresh out of his high school graduation. Doyoung was in the same boat, his friends that claimed to be just as out of luck as he had been had somehow struck gold and were suddenly packing their bags for their new dorms. No harm to them, he wished the best for them but it did sting a little to hold his impressive grades in his hands and know that he couldn’t accept the offers pouring in for him, bursary or not. 

The boys had bonded over that. Being a high achiever with no way out of poverty was bearable with a friend. Taeyong was thankful for his best friend, even more so after Doyoung had introduced him to his other friends from the multiple cash-in-hand jobs he found himself doing throughout the week. 

“Want me to make breakfast for your Mom? Don’t think I don’t know how soon your shift is.” 

Taeyong smiled, “Lots of fruit today. Maybe some orange juice.”

“Don’t worry. Get going, Kim Junmyeon is the shift manager today, he’ll beat your ass if you’re not on time.”

Taeyong was so grateful for Doyoung. 

♝♝♝

“Dinner’s ready.”

There’s a sharp knock against the wood, directly beside Taeyong’s head. He furrows his brows and buries his head further into his arms. “Not hungry,” he mumbles, perhaps he’ll be able to snatch a plate later when everyone else has left the kitchen.

“I’m not falling for that, come on,” there is a sharp tug on his hair, “go and sit at the table.” 

“Mark…” he grumbles, he can feel her roll her eyes behind his back. “Please just let me stay a bit longer.”

“Just get down there before you piss Grandma off.” 

He sits up straight, slowly, and raises an eyebrow at him. Mark was a nice boy, a boy of seventeen with a mop of brown hair and starry eyes. He was Taeyong’s younger cousin on his father's side. 

”That bitch, huh?” he swivels around in his chair, the seat squeaks and sticks with age and it takes an uncomfortable amount of time for him to face her. “You know I don’t care about her feelings.”

“That really woke you up, huh?” Mark tuts and heads to the window, where the squeak of his shoes is muted against the polyester rug. “Hey, even if you don’t like this whole situation you’re still going to have to deal with it, Yongie.”

Whatever.

Seoul flickers in the evening through thick layers of manmade smog and Taeyong reckons he's breathing in more carbon dioxide than he's breathing out these days. Mark turns his nose up at the city.

“Would it kill you to close the window? Honestly, this is my room and you’re stinking it out,” he takes a sniff of the air and coughs and Taeyong hopes that he’ll pass out and leave him alone. (He loved Mark, he really did.) 

“Why were you asleep?” He asks.

“I wasn’t,” Taeyong trains his eyes on the floor and scowls at the way the rug has bunched up beneath him, “I was just…” He trails off and searches the room for an answer, “checking the quality of the table.” He mumbles. 

Mark sighs and shuffles back over to the door. “Well, you should go and eat something. I don’t want your slow death from malnutrition to be on my conscious.”

“Yeah, whatever suits you.” The closing of the door is gentle and he thinks it’s time to sleep again. 

♝♝♝

Maybe he had been too harsh on Mark these days. Mark was good to him, more than good actually. In terms of family, there were only two people who mattered to him; Lee Jieun and Mark Lee. 

Mark’s side of the family was well off, a long line of businessmen and trading with a dash of exploitation and corruption had brought them to the top. Perhaps their wealth was proven by their penthouse apartment snuggled into the centre of Gangnam, or maybe it was proven by Mark’s frequent trips to study abroad or his Supreme school bag. 

Everyone had said that it was a damn near stroke of luck that Taeyong’s Mother had married into the family, a true Cinderella story in the making. Of course, that was what the media spun. A closer look told the tale of a classic drama, where a fucking bitch of a grandmother disapproved of the relationship, where she flung her filthy money around to get what she wanted and where she had a fit at the announcement of a pregnancy. Where she most certainly would rather have her youngest son dead than have a child with a ‘commoner’. 

Fucking. Bullshit. 

It would have been easier to hate Mark. After all, Mark had everything that Taeyong could've had, what he was supposed to have. A loving family, friends, fame, fortune, you name it and Mark had it. Mark’s existence was valid and Taeyong was in debt to him to top it all off. It was Mark who reached out and begged his own mother to keep him around. She kept a roof over their heads, fed them, supported them, clothed them. If she hadn’t done it so begrudgingly then maybe she would matter to Taeyong too. 

But with his Aunt’s support came the ties to the family. His grandmother saw it as the perfect opportunity to get a good name in the media, get some more friends in even higher places. How kind and charitable was the Lee family, to treat an in-law as their own despite ‘not having a child’ born into the lineage.

Taeyong’s existence was not fucking valid. 

Maybe it was his mother's declining health that had set him off. It wasn’t fair. Pretending to care for her in the eyes of the public while the money from Taeyong’s aunt had long since stopped coming through. It had to be a joke. So he became snappy. He became spiteful and angry and he wanted to bash his skull against the wall every time he had to accompany his Mother to the apartment, to keep up the farce through a fancy meal once a month. 

He actually would rather be selling tteokbokki at minimum wage than be at Mark’s house. But Mark was a sweet boy. 

He recalled the times that Mark had chosen to stay at his house. In the early hours, when he had just woken and sleep clouded his mind he was vulnerable. When it came to addressing what he had dreamt about Mark was quick to leave the room. In the afternoon, when the grass tickled his toes in the garden and his laughter seemed to cover his tracks, Taeyong would ask again. In the evenings when his pace had slowed down and his smile was forced he would grit his teeth as he bumped the bruises plastered carelessly over taut skin. During the night when his sobs would echo in the bathroom, given the go-ahead when Taeyong’s mother had left, he would scramble to shield himself when the door opened. His eyes would be red and brimming with tears. 

No amount of money is a substitute for real loving. Taeyong would hold him tight and kiss his head, whispering softly against his cheek.

They didn’t make documentaries about elite high schoolers because they were happy.

Taeyong was lucky in the respect. He knew that the fact that his existence was hidden from the top one percent did not matter, it did not matter because he would rather be forgotten than live like Mark, to live unloved. 

♝♝♝

“Have you been watching the news lately?” Doyoung asks. 

They are in Taeyong’s room, on his bed. Cool linens combat the summer heat and the rest of the boys lay sprawled comfortably on the floor. White noise from the television hums incessantly in the background as Mark lazily flicks through the channels. 

Jaehyun's voice, thick with sleep, echoed from the corner of the floor as he answers. “Scary, isn’t it? Really fuckin’ scary.”

The news in question, a series of missing person cases in the city. It was enough to freak anyone out. It was the whole reason that they had been heading straight home from work everyday and deep down it was the reason why they were currently sleeping over.

Jaehyun and Johnny, university students that Doyoung had met at a shipping firm, and Haechan, Mark’s best friend, had all ended up passing out on the floor after deciding it was too late and too dark to take the metro home. 

“I heard that the council is gonna issue a curfew soon. Citywide.” Mark chimes in. 

“Aw man, my Mom will lose her shit!” Haechan whines. “She’s already paid for my night lessons, there’s no way I’m getting a refund on that.” 

“Imagine having to go to school,” Johnny snorts, “couldn’t be me.”

“Hey, at least everyone else here has a diploma...dumbass.” He retorts.

Taeyong chuckles, Haechan had been amusing from the day Mark had introduced him. A boy of sixteen, he was a baby and Taeyong felt the same love he held for Mark stirring inside of him. It would be his birthday next week and Mark had a party planned, a gathering much like the current one. Like Mark, Haechan didn’t mind having friends a little older than him. It wasn’t as if there was a large age gap anyways but still, Taeyong thinks that maybe it makes the boy feel a little more grown up. 

As he drifts back to reality his eyes shift back to the television. He blinks and props himself up on his elbow as he notices the red banner running along the bottom of the screen. 

**_Breaking news._ **

It seems that none of the boys have noticed yet. He continues to read…

_ Fatal stabbing in Yangcheon...three injured...one dead...no suspect as scene. _

Taeyong felt his stomach flip. Yangcheon, a quiet neighbourhood, a quiet neighbourhood that was a ten minute walk from his house, a quiet neighbourhood where his Mother was working. It was only natural for Taeyong to feel himself fill with dread. His eyes flickered to the floor, and then to Doyoung beside him to check if anyone had seen it yet. He decided it would be better for them not to, Johnny would most definitely freak out and  _ everyone _ freaks out when Johnny does. 

Instead, he would send a quick message to his Mother, he knew that it would only be her and a baby at her clients home, he didn’t want to run the risk of waking the baby up with a phone call. He knew she was fine, the news always provided details when children were at the scene. No details and it was probably only adults involved. He had no clue how that worked. 

So he sends a text to make sure she is aware and that she double checks the locks and the windows before she sleeps and to make sure not to open the door to anyone at all. It was honseslty no surprise that a murder occured and he knew that the general public would be thinking the same. Twenty missing people in a week could only lead up to a fatal incident in the end. His Mother isn’t daft, she would not be shocked either but she is poorly - easy to take advantage of.

He hopes she sleeps right through the night.

He hopes that his friends sleep peacefully also. 

  
  
  


♝♝♝

Taeyong was awoken by the irritating sound of tree branches scraping against his bedroom window. He could see the shadow of them through his blinds as they swayed with the wind, each little twig looking like a finger reaching out to unlock the hatch. 

He remembered back to when he was a child when he would stare hopelessly at the window frozen in fear at the thought of a monster begging to enter his room. His heart would race as he imagined that the monster had been with him all along. Perhaps under the bed or in the closet, maybe whatever it was had taken a liking to sitting in the corner of the room and was hidden by piles of laundry. He recalled how he would frantically knock on the wall to wake up his mother in the next room. Paralyzed with fear he would bury his head under the covers and wait to hear the comforting click of his Mother’s lamp being switched on and the sound of her door gently swinging open. She would sleepily call his name and he would throw himself in her arms where she would carry him away from the monsters and into her own bed where he would spend the rest of the night, safe and sound.

But Taeyong was not a child. The tree outside his window was a tree and the pile of laundry was just a pile of laundry. Inside the closet were his clothes and the only monster under his bed was the six-pack of energy drinks he kept for getting through long shifts. (And maybe Jaehyun who had wiggled half under there in his sleep.) It was just unfortunate that the sound of the tree was so damn loud. 

He didn’t think there was much chance of falling asleep again, especially with Doyoung snoring directly into his ear. Tea seemed like the solution here and he decided to slither out of bed and slink downstairs into the kitchen to make some. 

He jumped a little at the sound of the kettle spluttering atop the stove as he stumbled over to flip the light switch on. He reached for a mug when suddenly- 

_ scratch, scratch, scratch _

\- a sound akin to the branches scraping his windowpane filled the room. He would have ignored it. If not for the fact that no tree branches could touch the windows in the kitchen. 

He felt tense as he backed himself into the corner of the kitchen and waited to hear the noise again. 

_ Scratch, scratch... _

There it was again. This time a little quieter than before as it competed with the screaming of the boiling kettle across the room. Taeyong felt uncomfortable, to say the least, especially with the explosion of missing person cases in the city. Maybe the neighbour’s cat had been locked out and so it had come to his door scratching for a place to stay? Or it could be... _ someone _ else?

No. He was scaring himself. If Taeyong was this paranoid then he knew he made a good choice not telling the others about the murder. 

The sound was relentless as it moved further from the kitchen and Taeyong leapt to the stove to remove the kettle as it cried. He poured his tea while peeking over his shoulder every couple of seconds to make sure that nobody would appear from the shadows. 

Alas, he couldn’t bear it any longer. He bit his lip and tiptoed back through the kitchen, passed the sofa, and to his front door. The sound was obvious here and he began to wonder if maybe it was this sound that woke him up rather than tapping against his window. 

He was scared. Despite knowing that his bedroom was free of monsters he knew that the outside world was not. It was his greatest fear to imagine the suspect mentioned from the news standing on his doorstep

_ Scratch, scratch... _

He stared at the door as the noise became more drawn out as if whatever was making the noise was growing weary. He prayed to God that it would be the cat clawing away outside as he hesitantly stepped forward to look through the peephole. He held his breath and pressed his eye to the glass. 

_ Meow.  _

It was the fucking cat.

He groaned as he watched its distorted body claw away at the door through the peephole. 

‘Stupid cat. Waking me up. Making me shit myself. God damn.’ He thought to himself. But he was glad. Very glad. He could ignore the cat, he knew it’s owners had installed a cat-flap, it wasn’t his fault that the cat was too fat to use it. Maybe he would have let it in another night when a murder hadnt occured basically two doors down. Tough luck, kitty.

He tiptoed back into the kitchen and grabbed his mug, making sure that everything had been turned off and that everything was locked up before making his way back upstairs. 

Standing in the doorway he smiled at his friends laying haphazardly on the floor, turning the bedroom into a human obstacle course of sorts. He felt comfortable looking at their worry free faces bathing in the moonlight that streamed through his blinds. 

He was glad that it was all in his head. The noise was the cat. 

  
  


W A S n’ T i t?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey this is gonna be a pretty long read. I'll try and stick to an upload schedule and I will /always/ include specific trigger warnings at the start of every chapter when it is necessary. 
> 
> Please enjoy!


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